ABSTRACT

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, women of the Western world have fought for a place in the political arena. Although most have battled within “men’s parties”, there have always been some who dreamed of, and realized, separate electoral alternatives within the political system. Audur Styrkársdóttir (1995) has found examples of women’s lists or women’s parties not only in all the Nordic countries except Finland, for example in Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, but also in the USA, England, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Israel, Japan and Australia. The oldest of these was a Women’s Equal Rights Party, founded in California, which fielded its own candidate for the presidential elections in 1884 and 1888. A recent and remarkably successful example is the Icelandic Women’s Alliance which was established in the early 1980s.